Tables in LayOut don't export to .DXF

Hi all,
I’m playing around with trying to get the cleanest export of my construction drawings from LayOut into .DXF. I’m having a problem with tables, they just export horribly to .dxf. The formatting is crazy bad, not just a little bad. Everything else is reasonable, it’s not how I wish it looked, but is usable for my purposes. But the tables make me wish that I didn’t use them in the first place. Is this just a known limitation? Should I give up on exporting tables? Can anything be done?

Disclaimer: I know you can export as a .pdf or other image types. I need to export as .DWG so my engineer can use the geometry in his CAD programs without having to draw everything from scratch. Tables are not strictly necessary but if I can’t get them to export then it just complicates a number of things since in the .dxf they get huge and overlap with other elements.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

I do now see that if I explode all my tables it exports much nicer

I wasn’t aware of this limitation. However, my workaround in your situation would be to send the engineer a PDF of the Layout file and a DWG/DXF of the Sketchup file/s it uses. Your engineer can then import the all important geometry but can see any important notes on the LO file.

I think what I will do is to save a copy of the LO file with a different name then explode the tables. Once exploded they export okay.

Question - was your LayOut table created in LayOut or is it an Excel reference? This link explains how to paste directly from Excel to CAD…but PASTESPEC command doesn’t work for Mac so I can’t test it:

Let us know if that helps at all as I’m sure other’s have the same problem. And not that you want to spend any more money but a paid extension to help with importing and managing table references could be useful as well: AutoCAD Excel | MicroStation Excel
I know neither of these solves the issue with LayOut itself but let’s hope future versions of the app figure out how to preserve formatting to dxf/dwg.

The tables are all made in LO. Using the latest version of SU and LO. For what it’s worth I’m also viewing with the most recent autocad viewer (not autocad full)